Israel is in talks to set up solar power plants in Egypt as part of a broader strategy to cut carbon emissions and boost its green tech sector, Bloomberg reports. Yair Pines, director general of the Israeli prime minister’s office, tells the business news information service that whether these plans progress depends in part on whether reliable transmission and storage infrastructure can be established.

Egypt isn’t the only country on Israel’s radar: Tel Aviv is also in talks with Jordan, Greece and Cyprus to set up joint PV facilities in their territories.

What isn’t clear is where this energy will go: According to Pines, the plants would be linked to the respective countries’ energy grids, opening up the possibility for Egypt to increase solar’s contribution to its energy mix. What seems more likely though is that these facilities will ship most of the electricity back to Israel, helping it to meet its new target to obtain 30% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

Why build here? The scarcity of land in Israel. Pines makes clear that our neighbor’s small, and densely-populated territory is one of the key things driving the government to explore projects in neighbouring territories.

Egypt also has ambitious renewable energy goals: The government wants to increase renewable energy capacity to cover 42% of the country’s electricity needs by 2030, up from just 10% currently.

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NPCC + Petrojet to work on EPC projects: Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) will work with state-owned Petrojet to explore engineering, procurement and construction projects in the UAE and Egypt, the company said yesterday after signing the MoU.